Over-saturation

I'm on record as believing that the over-saturation of Trek during the late nineties lead to it's downfall.

I'm worried that the same thing is happening again. Currently we have HD season one of ENT, HD season three of TNG and the Nu-Trek all vying for our money. I could afford to buy all these things but I do not have the time to watch them. I have a family, my time with them is precious, so I will choose to see the new movie this month (I am only halfway through season two of the HD TNG and ENT was never big on my list anyway). But I got thinking - I hope my (and other peoples) decision does not affect any possible future remaster of DS9. Why the big rush to get it all out anyway? They rushed season two TNG and look how that turned out. Surely we'd be happy with two releases a year, done well?

With a new Trek movie coming out there's going to be a push on Trek product to tie-in and build hype. This is normal, especially now that STID is a sequel to a popular movie. The hype will die down after STID's release as everyone turns their attention to the next major blockbuster (Man of Steele in June). There will be a brief resurgence in the fall when STID gets its DVD/blu-ray release and then that will be it, things will go back to normal. This will not lead to 90s esque oversaturation, we're not even anywhere near that and haven't been since the 90s.

I'm worried that the same thing is happening again. Currently we have HD season one of ENT, HD season three of TNG and the Nu-Trek all vying for our money. I could afford to buy all these things but I do not have the time to watch them. I have a family, my time with them is precious, so I will choose to see the new movie this month (I am only halfway through season two of the HD TNG and ENT was never big on my list anyway).

I hope my (and other peoples) decision does not affect any possible future remaster of DS9. Why the big rush to get it all out anyway? They rushed season two TNG and look how that turned out. Surely we'd be happy with two releases a year, done well?

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I presume part of the release policy is awareness that they have a remastering team that needs to be occupied and they found their rythm when to be able to release a TNG season on Blu-ray (considering the expenses involved with the project, they need to generate their profits ASAP).

The one thing that raised my eyebrow was the unexpected release of ENT on Blu-ray. This could have been done long ago and I was always under the impression they wanted to save this until last.

My personal and biased conspiracy theory, however, is of a different kind...and no, I will not get again involved in the screen format debate.

I'm on record as believing that the over-saturation of Trek during the late nineties lead to it's downfall.

I'm worried that the same thing is happening again.

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Not a chance. A movie every three to four years is not anything like having two series on simultaneously, while also releasing films.

Currently we have HD season one of ENT, HD season three of TNG and the Nu-Trek all vying for our money. I could afford to buy all these things but I do not have the time to watch them.

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Then don't buy them. Why buy them anyway? They'll all be on Netflix streaming, if they aren't already. Why purchase the discs? What would be the point of owning the physical media when they are just dust collectors?

I hope my (and other peoples) decision does not affect any possible future remaster of DS9. Why the big rush to get it all out anyway? They rushed season two TNG and look how that turned out. Surely we'd be happy with two releases a year, done well?

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Why are you worrying about the release (or lack of release) of HD discs that you're not going to purchase anyway, or if you do buy them, won't watch anyway?

Currently we have HD season one of ENT, HD season three of TNG and the Nu-Trek all vying for our money. I could afford to buy all these things but I do not have the time to watch them.

Click to expand...

Then don't buy them. Why buy them anyway? They'll all be on Netflix streaming, if they aren't already. Why purchase the discs? What would be the point of owning the physical media when they are just dust collectors?

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With physical media, once you buy the discs, you own that copy until you decide to get rid of it. You don't have to worry about CBS pulling the rights to TNG on Netflix, losing your internet connection, or lose a big chunk of your bandwidth by watching a few episodes.

Over-saturation of Trek might have been part of the problem. But another part of the problem was that they had stopped taking chances with the property.

For the most part, episodes of Voyager and Enteprise could have been episodes of TNG with a little re-writing. both of these seires had initial premises that could have lead to new and interesting story-telling, and they seem to have mostly wasted these opportunities. I will, however, give Enterprise credit for trying real hard in it's last season to turn this trend around.

With physical media, once you buy the discs, you own that copy until you decide to get rid of it. You don't have to worry about CBS pulling the rights to TNG on Netflix, losing your internet connection, or lose a big chunk of your bandwidth by watching a few episodes.

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All good points that are only important for people who intend to watch the discs.

Over-saturation of Trek might have been part of the problem. But another part of the problem was that they had stopped taking chances with the property.

For the most part, episodes of Voyager and Enteprise could have been episodes of TNG with a little re-writing. both of these seires had initial premises that could have lead to new and interesting story-telling, and they seem to have mostly wasted these opportunities. I will, however, give Enterprise credit for trying real hard in it's last season to turn this trend around.

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Agreed. It was more lack of quality versus quantity. I'm a huge TNG fan but Voyager was really just seasons 8 - 14 of TNG (story wise). At least DS9 tried something a little different. TNG was a reflection of the late 80's and 90's but the series after that really didn't try to change that much. While ENT started to get better the last season, it was too little too late. It didn't help that the movies weren't too terribly entertaining either. They were more like a two hour special episode.

In the mid to late 90's when the TNG cast was doing a movie every 2 years you had DS9 and Voyager doing 26 episodes a year. That's 104 brand new episodes of Star Trek on TV between each movie, now that's over-saturations. DVD and blu-ray re-releases are nothing to worry about and happen all the time to tie in with new movies

I'm on record as believing that the over-saturation of Trek during the late nineties lead to it's downfall.

I'm worried that the same thing is happening again. Currently we have HD season one of ENT, HD season three of TNG and the Nu-Trek all vying for our money. I could afford to buy all these things but I do not have the time to watch them. I have a family, my time with them is precious, so I will choose to see the new movie this month (I am only halfway through season two of the HD TNG and ENT was never big on my list anyway). But I got thinking - I hope my (and other peoples) decision does not affect any possible future remaster of DS9. Why the big rush to get it all out anyway? They rushed season two TNG and look how that turned out. Surely we'd be happy with two releases a year, done well?

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The same reason ANY product is put out: to make money.

Nothing more, nothing less.

And there's no "over-saturation". What's happening now (one movie every few years) is NOTHING like what went on in the 90's. In fact, quality of the productions aside, the 90's were a better time.

I'm on record as believing that the over-saturation of Trek during the late nineties lead to it's downfall.

I'm worried that the same thing is happening again. Currently we have HD season one of ENT, HD season three of TNG and the Nu-Trek all vying for our money. I could afford to buy all these things but I do not have the time to watch them. I have a family, my time with them is precious, so I will choose to see the new movie this month (I am only halfway through season two of the HD TNG and ENT was never big on my list anyway). But I got thinking - I hope my (and other peoples) decision does not affect any possible future remaster of DS9. Why the big rush to get it all out anyway? They rushed season two TNG and look how that turned out. Surely we'd be happy with two releases a year, done well?

Think of the parable of the goose that laid the golden eggs.

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having a movie come out every few years while releasing some DVDs is nothing like the situation in the '90s with Trek.

Sure there was some over-saturation of ST in the 90's, but that wasn't it's only problem.

When TNG came out it had little competition in terms of space based Sci-Fi or even Sci-Fi in general. By the time DSN, VOY and ENT came around this was no longer the case.

But the real killer was the percieved lack of quality/risk taking etc..

Yes TNG bears some similiarties to TOS but there was a what 18 year gap between those shows. DSN tried something different by being set on a space station. Yet almost as soon as TNG was off the air, VOY another ship based show replaced it, which in turn was repalced by ENT yet another ship based show.

Now I'm not saying that VOY and ENT didn't have their moments, nor that I didn't enjoy them but it was more of the same old, same old. VOY got the nick-name of TNG-Lite, which could be translate as like TNG but not as good. Many fans think ENT finally got going and living up more towards it's premise in it's last season.

Not a chance. A movie every three to four years is not anything like having two series on simultaneously, while also releasing films.

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Yeah, if anything, these new films have resurrected the franchise to some degree, without which we'd be headlong into the general population beginning to forget all about it or look at it like ancient history

Oversaturation? We're getting a movie every four years, and a promotional episode to encourage DVD sales every few months, and that's it. The rest of it is just tweaking to double dip in the sales like Lucas did every time he rereleased the Star Wars movies in the 90's and early 2000's.